Movement Study

Viewpoint is a centering mechanism used as a theater convention when engaging in ensemble and group performances. Viewpoints is an improvisational exercise that generates a non- hierarchical space of bodily interaction with architecture time, shape, movement, emotion, and story. As a starting point for my thesis research in fall 2016, I enrolled in an advanced certificate in Performance and Interactive Media Arts in order to understand the medium of performance and how I could incorporate active embodiment into my work. In the past, I only worked with still and time-based imaging. As an artist that engages with self-portraiture, I feel it is important to understand the operation of gesture and the bodily creation of space. This video is a collaborative performance using props, lighting, and sounds curated by myself and Dan Foley. The creation of a non- hierarchical space that is inherent in the Viewpoints exercise manifests in “Can’t be Titled” my interactive thesis project.

My Blackface

My Blackface is a photographic query into the legitimacy of stereotypes with in black culture. As a Caribbean American woman, I often have the opportunity to challenge the normalcy in stereotypes as they relate to my gender and race. For this project, I use my experience as a teenager when I was called an "oreo" question the origins of the stereotypical boundaries and the reactions of my peers when I would deviate from what is expected. These behavioral stereotypes that are mainstays in the black community are social constructed residue from the blackface minstrel performers of the 1800s. Minstrel performs in their origin where enacted by Caucasian males in order to depicted an exaggeration of the black male slave as lazy and buffoonish. Through the physical and digital materiality of my images I address the morphing of these stereotypes as social constructs through the process of cultural imprinting. Cultural imprinting is a repetitive process that happens in the development of the individual. During the performance and maturation of the individual’s narrative imprinting occurs through the familial and other societal relationships and well as the absorption of temporal culture. By using the seductive aesthetics of decorative fine art paper as an overlay I attempted to unpack the complexities of the allure of imprinting.

Pushing Daisies

As the economic crisis of 2007 sent the life of millennials into a tailspin. In this project, I used the vulnerable malleability of dolls to illustrate the potential trauma of economic regression and the compromises of the consequential circumstances. My male character is Ned and the female character mother. I use abstraction of everyday life to show their relationship family who co-habitat because of financial instability.